Her train of thought was interrupted by the sound of footsteps, and she heard a voice calling her. It was Richard.
“I meant to ask you: if you are short of money, let me lend you ten pounds. You must have time to look about you.”
Anne stared at him in surprise. He was very white; out of breath with running and his words came with an effort, but his tone was still one of exasperation.
“Thank you,” she said, looking him in the eyes. “Thank you, I have still seventeen pounds.”
“Well, later on,” answered Richard. “Whenever you want a loan, come to me. While one has money it is one’s duty to share it. That is what Grandison and I believe, and after all you and I come from the same village.”
After saying this he turned round and walked back, quietly cursing her existence.
FOURTEEN: A REMOVAL
“How could I ever have imagined that I was in love with Richard Sotheby?” Anne asked herself in astonishment as she walked back across Paris. “It turns out I don’t love him enough to borrow money from him. He would always behave well, he would always be kind, yet I think he would be delighted if he were never to see me again. I shall never ask him for help or for advice; I shall never go near his studio after to-morrow.” And it occurred to her suddenly that the money he had offered to lend her had been earned by his father, and that it might have been spent on Rachel, or on the Temperance Hotel.
“I wonder why it is that Ginette loves him?” she asked herself. “If she really does. If I were her I should lose my heart to Mr. Grandison.” And saying this she recalled the look in Grandison’s eyes and how he had kept them fixed on her, how he had seemed to be going to speak and the gesture with which he had sunk back into his chair as she went out of the studio. “Richard has robbed me of knowing him. We should easily have become intimate, we should have been friends,” she said with her heart full of bitterness. Every detail of her walk with Grandison came back and hurt her.
“Well, I am to be a mannequin if they like my figure.” The more she thought of Ginette’s suggestion the better she liked it, and the more difficult she found it to understand Richard’s annoyance. She was puzzled to find an explanation, and tried one theory after another, but nothing she could imagine seemed to her probable, and when five o’clock came on the following afternoon she had almost persuaded herself that the explanation of Richard’s ill-humour must be something quite unconnected with herself. She knocked and Richard opened the door, and stood for a moment in the threshold before admitting her. He stared at her with a grin on his face and said: “Oh! So it is you, Anne!”